Taking Away the Struggle to Read in the Middle Grades

Karen Broaddus & Gay Ivey

Jacob sits in his seventh grade language arts classroom holding open a copy of Holes (Sachar, 1998) while staring toward the window. He chews the end of a milk straw carried back from lunch as his gaze wanders around the room to other students and different books. Most students appear engaged, but others, like Jacob, pass reading workshop time either staring off into space or looking blankly at the pages of books they cannot read. At the end of 45 minutes, Jacob will move into science class where he will sit holding open a copy of a science textbook.

Literacy educators in the middle grades have made great strides away from traditional read-the-story-and-answer-the-questions-type instruction toward more student-centered reading and writing that promotes student choice, interesting children's and adolescent literature, and personal response (e.g., Atwell, 1998; Rief, 1992). Still, students like Jacob are easy to find even in middle school classrooms with high-quality language arts instruction. Equally easy to find are good teachers who feel ill-prepared to help students like Jacob benefit from reading in school.
Research on middle school readers sheds some light on why current common practices to promote literacy in schools may leave even our most knowledgeable, expert teachers wringing their hands in frustration when it comes to teaching young adolescents who still find reading difficult. In this article, we highlight research that is important to our understanding of struggling middle school readers, and based on that research, we suggest some guiding principles for instruction.

Who Are Struggling Middle School Readers?
Both new and experienced middle school teachers can quickly name the students who either cannot or will not read in their classrooms. Likewise, most teachers have formulated their own beliefs about what the greatest challenges are in reading for particular students, such as lack of motivation, limited vocabulary and knowledge about the world, weak comprehension skills, or limited decoding skills. Most teachers probably do have a ballpark idea about the roots of their students' reading problems. However, research and our own experiences indicate that reading difficulties in middle school defy simplistic or singular explanations, particularly if we are to use our knowledge about students to develop a plan of action for helping them to become more engaged and successful readers.

The mixed identities of struggling readers: Uneven development
Large-scale assessments indicate that we have significant numbers of students across achievement levels in the middle grades who struggle with reading thoughtfully and critically (Donahue, Voekl, Campbell, & Mazzeo, 1999) and who become increasingly resistant to both academic and recreational reading as they enter adolescence (McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995). In addition, many middle school students are still developing in reading fluency (Pikulski, 1991) and word knowledge (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2000). Thus, we can be sure that our lowest achieving readers are likely challenged by motivational issues and by a lack of some fundamental and essential knowledge about reading.

What current research is helping us to realize, however, is that attributing students' reading difficulties to a single causal factor is neither accurate nor helpful to designing good instruction. Ivey (1999a) highlighted the complexities within three sixth-grade readers and the dynamics in the reading experiences of one struggling reader in particular. While this student was viewed by her teachers as the lowest performing reader in the class, with difficulties in decoding and fluency when reading grade-level texts, she was strategic and enthusiastic when listening to texts read aloud, and she was keenly interested in learning from a range of texts, including trade books and traditional content-area textbooks. Furthermore, she read eagerly and fluently in interesting but simply-written texts. While this student certainly would have benefited from explicit instruction to build her word knowledge, a program that centered primarily on decoding skills and that failed to incorporate her strengths in reading would leave this student with little motivation to read and an impoverished sense of how reading could enrich her life.

Likewise, Primeaux (2000) described how middle school students characterized as struggling readers exhibited both reading strengths and successes when they experienced reading instruction that was developed from three social constructivist principles that highlight students' strengths rather than their weaknesses: (a) a responsive literacy environment in which individual assessment and instruction were integrally connected, (b) explicit comprehension strategy instruction, and (c) time spent engaged with authentic, connected texts. Similarly, Morris, Ervin, and Conrad (1996) studied the progress of a reading disabled middle school student who made significant progress in reading when he was provided with instruction and reading materials that were assessment-driven and student-centered and that balanced the learning of essential reading skills and strategies with rich and meaningful reading experiences. The studies by Ivey (1999a), Primeaux (2000), and Morris and his colleagues (1996) point to the multidimensionality of struggling readers' abilities and dispositions and to the importance of considering individual reading development. They also encourage teachers to consider a range of possibilities for what might either inhibit or enhance reading for low-achieving students beyond the most visible areas of need—such as the context of the reading, the school curriculum, or the knowledge or actions of the teacher herself.

In-school versus out-of-school reading for struggling readers
In general, young adolescents may be unable to reconcile school reading with real-life reading. Middle grades students may participate extensively in non-academic literate activities out of school (e.g., Bean, Bean, & Bean, 1999; Alvermann & Hagood, 2000) in what Finders (1997) refers to as a "literate underlife" (p. 1). However, this out-of-school reading is driven by their open-ended explorations of personal interests, identities, and social roles, a far cry from the kinds of teacher-driven, product-oriented reading expected of them at school. Whereas in school students may read mainly to perform well on a test or to create a response to a book, students' out-of-school reading may range from learning about a sports hero in a biography or newspaper article, to reading lyrics on a music compact disc jacket as a model for writing an original song, to making weekend plans with a friend through e-mail correspondence.

Just as purposes for reading vary in and out of school in the middle grades, so do reading materials. What middle school students report that they like to read outside of school, such as popular magazines, scary stories, and mysteries, are typically not available in their classrooms (Worthy, Moorman, & Turner, 1999). However, reluctant readers report that they would be more willing to read if they had time to read and access to their preferred materials in school (Worthy & McKool, 1996). In our survey of over 1,700 sixth graders (Ivey & Broaddus, 2001), we learned that good reading materials were the greatest factor in these students' motivation to read in school. However, what these students read in their language arts classrooms differed drastically from what they reported that they preferred to read and what they said they read out of school. In addition, students' school reading was extremely narrow in scope, including mainly award-winning, fictional class novels, while their out-of-school choices included a range of genres (e.g., magazines, nonfiction, poetry, comics, newspapers) covering a variety of topics (e.g., World War II, dolphins, cooking).

While research on the importance of adolescents' out-of-school literacies has generally highlighted students who can read proficiently but choose not to read in school, there is no reason to believe that the mismatch between in-school and out-of-school reading does not also apply to truly struggling readers who are experiencing the same kinds of social, emotional, and psychological development and explorations as their peers. In reality, the need for teachers to pay more attention to students' personal interests in school reading may be even more crucial for struggling readers who, through years of nonfluent, unfocused, and failed attempts at school reading, may have never developed real purposes for any kind of reading. In any case, research on adolescents' out-of-school literacies suggests that to get a more accurate picture of who struggling readers are, we need to observe them when they have opportunities to read what is important to them.

In summary, understanding the specific instructional needs of struggling readers may seem like a complicated task for teachers. There are tremendous differences between students as readers in the middle grades. Struggling readers are complex. Personal interests play a crucial role in struggling readers' engagement and success with reading. However, middle school teachers can create classrooms that are responsive to the needs and interests of not only struggling readers, but of all of the students they teach.

How Middle Grades Teachers Can Support Struggling Readers in the Classroom
The literacy research about young adolescents points to three basic principles about how teachers can support all types of readers in the middle grades. First, teachers need to know students as readers. This includes not only collecting assessment information about individual student strengths and areas that need development, but also exploring personal interests with students and their background knowledge about different topics. Second, classroom and school resources should include a wide range of materials for independent and instructional reading, and reading instruction should include work with alternative text sources such as the Internet and informational pamphlets. Third, time spent reading must be a priority in classroom instruction, and teachers need to play an active role in guiding and supporting individual readers during silent reading time. Reading instruction should not only take into account content area goals, but also should include developmentally appropriate instruction in areas such as word knowledge and reading fluency. We will briefly discuss each of these principles below, providing examples of classroom practices and suggesting sources for further reading.

Finding out about students as readers
What does an interest inventory show about a student's reading habits both inside and outside of school? How does that student make choices about selecting books in your classroom? Is the student able to read a self-selected book with appropriate accuracy, phrasing, and understanding? Is the student able to read a grade-level text selection with fluency and comprehension? Knowing individual students as readers is essential to designing appropriate instruction (Johnston, 1987). In turn, informal assessment during instruction provides opportunities for you as a teacher to find out more about how a student learns. Interviews with a student or a parent can yield important information about the development of reading skills and interests over time. Observations of a student reading in the classroom or participating in a book discussion can provide a clearer understanding of reading behaviors and comprehension strategies.

Personalized instruction creates an informal setting for this type of regular information gathering. For example, guiding students to exercise personal choice yet to choose texts wisely provides a forum for discussing student interest, independent reading levels, and outside reading practices. Teaching students a system for selecting books for independent reading also allows them to reflect on the skills that they are building in fluency, word knowledge, and comprehension. See Olhausen and Jepsen (1992) for a description of the "Goldilocks" strategy of supporting students to determine whether books are easy, difficult, or just right. For a sample case study, look at Bomer's (1999) description of his work on book selection with J.T., a 12-year-old who regularly abandoned books in a reading workshop environment. Further assessments might include anecdotal notes on students' responses to a read aloud or an analysis of oral reading. Pathways to independence: Reading, writing, and learning in grades 3-8 (Worthy, Broaddus, & Ivey, 2001) provides a description of writing activities and informal reading assessments to use at the beginning of the school year and ongoing assessments to explore students' development of skills and strategies in areas such as word knowledge, fluency, and comprehension.

Developing expertise in reading materials
Assessments provide the foundation for matching students with books. Keep the following three points in mind when selecting appropriate materials for middle grades students: (a) access to materials on topics of student interest; (b) the availability of a wide range of genres and text formats, as well as different types of illustrated books; and (c) a broad sampling of texts that are varied in reading difficulty, depth of content, and length of the selection. Student interests are an important link to engaged reading at school and independent reading at home. However, research that explores middle school students' preferences and interests in reading materials have shown little connection between the types of materials students prefer to read and the materials that are readily available to students in classroom and school libraries (Worthy & McKool, 1996; Worthy, Moorman, & Turner, 1999; Worthy, Turner, & Moorman, 1998).

Access to reading materials is not only a matter of student interest, but also a curricular issue. In our own survey of middle grades readers (Ivey & Broaddus, 2001), most students mentioned award-winning contemporary realistic fiction or fantasy for in-school reading. Limited numbers of individual titles were noted by students. We found that teacher-selected class novels not only curtailed students' reading of different genres, but also restricted their exposure to diverse authors. Whole class reading also does not take individual skills into account (e.g., reading level, familiarity with content vocabulary, prior knowledge about the topic).

What does this mean for teachers? First, be sure that a variety of books are readily available in the classroom library. This range of materials (see Ivey & Broaddus, 2000) should include high interest materials for engagement (e.g., scary stories, series books, graphic novels, joke books, magazines, baseball cards), easy-to-read materials (e.g., books with repetitive patterns, easy nonfiction series books, picture books, songs, transitional chapter books), and sophisticated fiction and nonfiction (e.g., award-winners, biographies, collections of primary sources, informational books, fantasy). Include books that are ideal for use during reading and writing instruction in the classroom. For example, books that include scripts can be used to support the development of fluent reading through group rehearsal and performance of nonfiction or fiction in a readers theater setting (Worthy & Broaddus, 2001/2002; Young & Vardell, 1993). Rehearsed reading helps build content vocabulary knowledge, and as students practice for performance, they build an understanding of character motivation.

Try using excerpts from primary sources such as I was Dreaming of Coming to America: Memories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project (Lawlor, 1995) or Slavery Time When I was Chillun' (Hurmence, 1997), interviews such as Talking with Adventurers (Cummings & Cummings, 1998) or Oh, Freedom! Kids Talk about the Civil Rights Movement with the People Who Made it Happen (King & Osborne, 1997), dialogue from fiction such as Regarding the Fountain: A Tale in Letters of Liars and Leaks (Klise, 1998) or Monster (Myers, 1999), and poetry such as Big Talk: Poems for Four Voices (Feischman, 2000) or Math Talk: Mathematical Ideas in Poetry for Two Voices (Pappas, 1991). Illustrated books in unique formats are ideal for exploring perspective and format in writing. A picture book portraying different points of view such as Voices in the Park (Browne, 1998) can be compared with a graphic novel with multiple voices such as Making up Megaboy (Walter, 1998). Unique historical perspectives can be explored through illustration and symbolism. For example, Taino culture before the arrival of Columbus is explored in the picture book Encounter (Yolen, 1992) and the transitional novel Morning Girl (Dorris, 1992) (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Providing time to read and making it count
Even if a teacher provides excellent resources for students and uses ongoing assessment to track reading skills and interests, little progress will be made unless students are given regular opportunities to read silently, not only during language arts time, but across the school day. Sixth graders who responded to our survey (Ivey & Broaddus, 2001) named free reading time as their favorite part of language arts class because it gave them a chance to become engaged with a book, to think, and to learn. For this reason, we believe independent reading time would also benefit students in classes like science and social studies.

While we do not believe that scheduling reading times is a hard sell for language arts teachers, we do realize the challenge to make this time count for struggling readers, who are more likely than other students to become distracted and seemingly disinterested in time spent reading. We know that students will benefit most from reading when they can sit in the driver's seat and negotiate their own reading (Ivey, 2000). While providing readable, interesting materials and teaching students to make good choices is a excellent start, struggling readers may also need personalized instruction from the teacher to get started with free reading (Ivey, 1999b; Ivey & Broaddus, 2000). This could mean sitting with a student and "buddy reading" until the student is hooked and comfortable with the reading, reading aloud to the student until she is ready to take over, or having explicit discussions about what kinds of books are "just right."

Although we want students to read uninterrupted for most of scheduled reading times, having all students read at once creates a setting in which the teacher can coach individual students on the strategies good readers use to comprehend text or decode difficult words. We recognize the complexity of middle grades readers, but reading instruction is rarely oriented toward these individual student needs (Tomlinson, Moon, & Callahan, 1998). To get a sense of what teachers can do for struggling readers during independent reading times, look at Bomer's (1999) description of "running alongside readers" to see how teachers can play an active role in reading conferences that assist student performance in meaning making.

Final Thoughts
From our interpretation of the research, along with our own experiences as teachers of middle grade struggling readers and of their teachers, we have come to believe that reading must be taught as a developmental process, and instruction should be based on what teachers learn about individual students. The teaching and content of reading for struggling readers must be personalized even in the regular classroom. Whole-class, one-size-fits-all models of instruction make it impossible for teachers to observe and respond to what struggling readers do well and what confuses them.

If reconceptualizing your classroom to better meet the needs of all of your students seems daunting at the moment, start with just one child. Think back to our description of Jacob at the beginning of this article. Do you know a student like Jacob? Have you seen that student engaged in learning? What was the context? What were the materials? What did you do to make it a positive experience? Read case studies about teachers working with struggling readers (Bomer, 1999; Broaddus, 2000; Broaddus & Bloodgood, 1999; Ivey, 1999a; Morris, Ervin, & Conrad, 1996) as you prepare your own case study (Worthy, Broaddus, & Ivey; 2001). Put your student in the driver's seat. Begin with informal assessments, explore materials with the student, and practice "running alongside" a reader. See what happens when your struggling reader does not have to struggle.

References

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Karen Broaddus and Gay Ivey teach at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. E-mail: broaddke@jmu.edu